Today marks the beginning of the Spring 2017 semester for me here at Cal State Fullerton. Obviously, that means a few things. It means the end of winter break, which is certainly unfortunate to an extent, but inevitable. No break can last forever. It also means brand new classes to adjust to, in this case a course on California government, a course on primate behavior, an honors-level history course and an investigative reporting class where we’ll be tackling the issue of homelessness with the school’s newspaper advisor.

Finally, a new semester means a new run of the Daily Titan. Like I alluded to just the other day, I’d say it wound up being a good one. We covered the Women’s Marches in Los Angeles and Santa Ana, the new interim city manager of Fullerton, art exhibits now on display on campus and, of course, Michael Dukakis coming to talk as a part of the Patrons of the Library 2016-2017 lecture series.

The former governor had a lot of interesting things to say about both U.S. foreign and domestic policies. He also made his perspective on the new president, Donald Trump, pretty clear. While I feel like I addressed all of these things in the story quite well, one thing I feel like I could’ve done better was talk about the personality of the man who was giving those opinions.

Michael Dukakis was not only a great orator, he was generally a great man as well. He’s intelligent, experienced, funny and really knew how to read a crowd. His extensive knowledge of U.S. political history was accentuated well by personal stories he was able to tell about his history in politics and life. He also didn’t stick to one side of the political aisle, as he was able to pull stories and ideas from a wide variety of people. On top of that, he had an opinion and something to say about everything, but not in a negative way by any means.

My only real regret covering this event was that I missed the chance to greet the man personally while I did extra interviews to finish my story. If he ever comes back to talk at Fullerton, or anywhere nearby that I might be able to see him again, I’ll have to be sure to take the chance.

However, if you want to see my story in its entirety, you can see it here. We have a new website design and it’s really quite nice, so I’d certainly recommend taking a look around at some of the other sections while you’re there. You can also check out my whole archive of work for the Daily Titan through the link over on the right!

At the same time, Michael Dukakis, a professor, former Massachusetts governor and democratic presidential nominee in 1988, came to speak at Cal State Fullerton about his views on United States foreign and domestic policy, as well as his opinions on the new President.

Michael Dukakis speaking to a room of about 120 people in the Cal State Fullerton Pollak Library’s Rotary Club Room 130.

Articles on both these events and more are going to be in our first edition of the Daily Titan for the Spring 2017 semester, and I can tell already that it’s going to be a good one. We go into production tomorrow, and the paper will be out on Monday, so look forward to seeing it!